>> First, you have no time. You read a lot but there’s no time to think. > This is has nothing to do with being a foreigner, or being in any specific country.

>> First, you have no time. You read a lot but there’s no time to think. > This is has nothing to do with being a foreigner, or being in any specific country. It's a university culture, and every university has its own pace of teaching, in China or US. I think it also has substantially to do with reading/linguistic fluency in the language the class is taught in. Many university courses are paced to push the abilities of well prepared, ambitious, and dedicated native speakers. If you have to read 500+ pages/week (or in some fields, more like 1000+ pages/week), and write a paper on average once every other week, you have to be a very strong reader, with a lot of experience analyzing and constructing linguistic arguments. A non-native speaker who is a bit uncomfortable with reading might read at half the speed of their fellow students; they could end up spending twice as much time while still comprehending less, and it would be a serious struggle.